(no subject)

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Firstly I've got to say how much I'm enjoying Biskybat's fanfic. Enid Blyton is undergoing such a revival at the moment:in the library with my daughter this afternoon she chose a Malory Towers book. I was a bit doubtful as I never liked Enid Blyton, but she wanted it because her friends are all reading them. The shelves were groaning with reissued Blytons with revamped covers. This brings me onto my point - would Antonia Forest be more widely read and in print today, if she had kept her stories in the same time period throughout? (I mean the post-war 40s) Would modern teachers/librarians/children cope with the aspects of Marlow world that they dislike if those aspects could be accepted as part of the period? Plenty of children's classics survive featuring privileged middle class kids with nannys and cooks etc. and the survival of Malory Towers etc. shows that boarding school stories are not a problem. But is the Marlowverse just too much of a problem transposed into the seventies?

Comments

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Personally I find the first three books more tricky to relate to (both as a child and an adult) because I find the upper-class-ness more jarring, even though it is "in period". I mean the way the children address their parents so politely as "mother" and "father" for example, and the respectful attitude that goes along with that. I find Mrs Marlow a very two dimensional upper class mummy in those books. In the middle books the characters feel very comfortably "themselves" and an authentic family to me. whether they have ponies and go to private schools doesn't really matter.

It would be really interesting if, for example, the school stories were repackaged with modern covers and described as the "Kingscote" stories for example, to see whether they could appeal to modern children. I think they could, and also Peter's Room and Ready Made Family, and actually even the Players' books too (although I think their audience would be a very narrow, but possibly very appreciative, one). The Kingscote books, having very much their own "world" which changes comparatively little, would probably stand the best chance though.

My daughter likes Enid Blyton too JackMerlin! Though she can't read it herself yet. But I think Enid Blyton appeals to a very different group of readers - 7-9 year olds can read them, whereas I can't imagine most 7-9 year olds tackling Forest! They are pacy, inventive easy reads, without any complex psychology...not really AF, despite the subject matter. (I'm not knocking Blyton: she was, in her way, a genius.)

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

It would be really interesting if, for example, the school stories were repackaged with modern covers and described as the "Kingscote" stories for example, to see whether they could appeal to modern children.

That's pretty much what happened in 1984, when I bought Autumn Term just after finding out my family were moving abroad and I was going to have to go to boarding school. All 4 Kingscote stories were reprinted with then-trendy illustrations on the cover. I quite liked them but really as a 9-year-old the emotional complexity was too complicated for me (and the Guides section in Autumn Term was hugely stressful!) and I didn't re-read them until I was an adult (AT not for another decade...) I retreated for another couple years into the security of Blyton's characters where characters were nice with one well-explained character flaw which they worked to overcome, while the not-nice ones saw the errors of their ways.

Given how rapidly the books vanished from the shops, while the hugely-dated Chalet School thrived for years in Armada reprints, I suspect others had a similar opinion. Blyton is accessible to a five-year-old (when I first read Malory Towers). Chalet School shows a little bit of the viewpoints of the staff but still in a childlike way. The complex characters of Forest just aren't really childrens books even though they have children in.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I agree and disagree. As a child I also found the Guides bit of Autumn Term (and even more so when Nicola runs away to see Giles) too traumatic to read regularly, and the same with End of Term (the arguments between Tim and Nick). However it didn't put me off reading the rest of the books. I was at a stage of reading where I had probably left Enid Blyton and The Chalet School behind me, more-or-less, when I really started enjoying Forest though (hard to remember exactly).

I do think the Players books are more adult books though...I have fantasies of writing an adaptation of them for Radio Four, think they would make a great serial.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

just wanted to add, think I discovered the books through those same 1980s puffins paberbacks (Margery thingy covers)? also had some rather lurid looking Faber fanfare paberbacks of the holiday stories.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

To add - I think Forest could sell today, if sold to an adult audience looking for a bit of nostalgia, a bit like Miss Read.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

To add to the Blyton/Chalet comparison, both authors wrote a lot of books in a relatively short period, but Forest only wrote a few over long time period. Would Harry Potter have been the cultural phenomenon it is had Rowling published one book every five years or so, with a couple in the middle digressing from Harry's adventures into jolly hols in the Scottish highlands? I doubt it.

Forest also probably suffered from the fashion on the late 70s and 80s for "realistic" children's books, which meant modern settings (until the fashion for SF and post-apocalyptic grim stuff), and no boarding schools. And here numbers hit again; it mattered a lot less in terms of keeping the books in a public reading consciousness if school librarians stopped buying Blyton and Brent-Dyer for a bit, than if they stopped buying Forest when they only had one in the first place rather than twenty.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me that EB has actually become a classical author! - the part that stands the test of time rather than the quality bit.

Children continue to cling to EB in the teeth of varying parental disapproval (and this disapproval stretches back into my own childhood when EB was still writing; she was being banned from libraries even then) because she produces highly imaginative escapist worlds without adults, is undemanding and provides happy endings.

AF wrote for intelligent, thinking children and I think part of the reason for her relative unpopularity is that such children may not be drawn to school or holiday story books and therefore never find her. I appreciate her far more as an adult than I ever did as a child.

And glad you like the fanfic, jackmerlin!

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

And intelligent, thinking children are probably a relative minority anyway.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can't see Nicola Marlow or Miranda having much time for AF's school stories because the subject matter wouldn't interest them although they would probably have liked the historical ones.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

How true. I would never have found AF myself, not being into school stories if my genius god mother (who was a childrens' librarian) hadn't given me Autumn Term for a birthday present.

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

I've always loved comparing the works of EB and AF. So many EB characters have parallels in AF (Gwendolyn Lacy and Pomona Todd, for example) that I wonder if there's some hidden pantheon of girls' school story archetypes everyone's drawing from.

And yes, to add my voice to the chorus, EB is much more accessible than AF. Her writing and characterisation are simple, she has happy endings, clear moral messages and steers well clear of sex, periods, drugs and other touchy topics.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

I'd see AF as a YA writer rather than a children's writer - except YA didn't exist at the time she was writing. I wish I'd discovered her in my early teens (rather than my late teens) as she'd have bridged the gap between Blyton (which I'd outgrown) and Austen (which I was struggling to grow into). Still, better that I discovered her late than never.

[charverz.livejournal.com]

Not so long ago when my boys regularly entered "Battle of the Books", my wife (an English teacher) and I were appaalled at the absolute bilge that was on the list. Quite apart from the fact that there were few books aimed at boys, the common theme seemed to be that the heroine/hero had to a) lose a parent OR b) suffer a severe illness/handicap.

Give me AF any day.

The school stories are not so entrenched in the boarding school that day hops wouldn't be able to relate. At heart these are stories about relationships - between siblings, between friends, between enemies. If you can get past superficial differences (English v. North American speech patterns - dare I say use of good English?; netball and cricket instead of basketball, etc. I don't see why modern children could not relate to them. (Apart from the fact that due to excessive electronic entertainment most have very short attention spans.)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Modern children are all North American? Who knew? ;)

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

lol, yes. I must have been imagining my son playing cricket this summer.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think Mrs Bertie and Doris are definitely a bit of a problem by the Seventies and early Eighties - they really don't seem to fit with Lawrie making herself up as a punk!

[charverz.livejournal.com]

Yes, but remember that Trennels is out in the country, and at school the Marlows are mixing with urban girls. If Mrs. Bertie and Doris didn't watch telly, they might have been mildly "frozen in time". I remember 30 years ago going to practice law in a little town north of Toronto. I pooh-poohed my father's advice, telling him that "things weren't like that any more", only to find that in Barrie in 1980 - they were!

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Mrs Bertie certainly does watch the TV - she mentions going to watch it at her friend's house in the village, and by the end of the series there is a TV at Trennels.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I could imagine a Mrs. Bertie in the eighties easily enough - basically a 1940's woman who hasn't changed and is quite happy doing the same job she's been doing for 40 years, the "family retainer bit" as Nicola or Peter once put it. She could be well into her seventies, anyway, if she's fit and active and doesn't want to give up. Doris is a bit more unlikely - not many young single women in that sort of job in the eighties.

[charverz.livejournal.com]

But what if we picture Doris as the kind of person who has no head for learning what the schools want, but talented with her hands? But lacking the ambition to go out and make a career of it? She might just decide to go with the Marlows since it's secure and not overly stressful.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that Doris wasn't that bright, either :-) She's got that amazing gift for sewing, but as charverz says, lacking the ambition or maybe even the awareness to do more with it.